Shadow Files

by R. J. Jagger

  “No problem.”

  Wilde’s office wasn’t overly hard to break into. He really needed better locks. Inside, Shade pointed to the corner, the empty corner.

  “There was a cupboard door leaning against the wall right there,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So, that’s what’s wrong, it’s gone. Help me look for it.”

  They searched.

  As they did, Shade explained how it came from the shed where Visible Moon had been kept. Wilde had used it to scratch a replica of the marks on the floor under the mattress.

  It didn’t show up.

  “Maybe Wilde took it home or something,” London said.

  Shade shook her head.

  “We’ll ask him but he’d have no reason. Someone stole it, that’s my guess.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  120

  T he lawyer showed no reaction to the matches. He didn’t take them out of Wilde’s hand nor did he say they weren’t his. Instead he looked directly into Wilde’s eyes and said, “Are you the one who broke into my office?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “That’s a serious offense.”

  “There’s a lot of offenses that are serious,” Wilde said. “Take murder, for example. That’s a pretty serious offense.”

  “I can’t argue with you about that.”

  “I’d think not,” Wilde said. “Did you file a police report on the break-in?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? Do you have something to hide?”

  Black put a stoic look on his face.

  He walked away and said over his shoulder, “Don’t do it again.”

  Wilde let him get three steps and said, “Hey, Black.”

  The man turned.

  Wilde blew him a kiss.

  “That’s from Senn-Rae. See you around.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  Wilde watched him walk away.

  Then something happened that he didn’t expect.

  The front door of the office building opened and a woman stepped out. She locked the door behind her and headed up the street in the opposite direction of Black.

  A briefcase swung from her hand.

  Wilde intercepted her twenty steps down the sidewalk when she stopped to light a cigarette. She was about thirty. Tan legs and arms were framed in a white sundress. Her eyes were green and her hair was thick.

  “Are you Stuart Black’s secretary?”

  She took a deep drag, pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and blew smoke.

  The filter was red with lipstick.

  “Maybe, why?”

  He smiled.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jackie.” A beat, “Jackie Fontaine.”

  Wilde shook her hand.

  “Nice to meet you Jackie Fontaine. I’d like to talk to you about a few things if you have a couple of minutes.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Bad things,” Wilde said. “Very bad things. Things that will make you wish you never met me.”

  “Well that’s pretty mysterious,” she said. “Am I supposed to be intrigued?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s what I was hoping for. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  She studied him.

  Then she smiled, not much but a little. The smile was slightly crooked; one side went up a little farther than the other.

  It was very sexy.

  “I like whiskey better than coffee,” she said.

  “Then whiskey it is.”

  Wilde put his arm around her waist and steered her towards Larimer Street.

  She didn’t protest the arm.

  “My questions are about the Shadow file,” he said.

  As they cut down 16th Street, something happened that Wilde didn’t expect. In the crowd up ahead, Senn-Rae walked directly towards him.

  She was preoccupied, looking in windows.

  Then she spotted him.

  Her eyes went from him to the woman to him.

  Wilde got busy thinking of what to say but never got the chance. Senn-Rae turned at the corner and walked briskly out of sight. When Wilde got to the street and looked up, Senn-Rae was running.

  “A friend of yours?” Jackie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  They walked in silence.

  Then Jackie said, “It doesn’t bother me if you’re a player. I’m just looking to rent, not own.”

  “Good to know.”

  121

  W ilde and his new friend Jackie ended up at a cozy table in the back corner of a dark bar called Whiskey Snake. He felt bad about what he was doing. The woman was looking forward to getting him into bed and that wasn’t going to happen. As bad as he felt about it, he felt worst about all the bodies piling up.

  To his credit, he was honest with her.

  Her told her there were pinup murders taking place.

  He told her his theory that her boss, Stuart Black, was the person doing them. Black’s number was written on a piece of paper that Wilde found in the house of Jennifer Pazour, one of the victims. Black also did legal work for Jack Mack, who got shot to death last night. Most importantly, Black had files on the pinup victims in his office, hidden in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, in an expandable file marked Shadow.

  The Shadow file.

  Inside that file was information that only the killer would know.

  “I’m putting myself out on a limb here telling you all this,” Wilde said. “The reason I’m doing it is because I need you to help me.”

  “How?”

  “I want to know if he’s after the woman we just saw back on the street,” he said. “Her name’s Senn-Rae. She’s a lawyer.”

  “What if he is after her? Are you going to kill him?”

  Wilde lit a cigarette.

  “If he somehow ends up dead, I’ll be sure you get another job somewhere. You have my promise. If you have rent payments or something you’re worried about, I’ll cover ’em until you get on your feet.”

  She looked into his eyes.

  “You’re not going to take me to bed, are you?”

  Wilde blew smoke.

  “In different circumstances, if I wasn’t already with someone, I would,” he said. “There’s something between us. We both know it. It’s not something I can act on though.”

  She frowned.

  “You shouldn’t lead a girl on like that.”

  “You’re right. I’m a jerk.”

  She didn’t loosen up until the third drink. Then she started to talk.

  “Stuart’s a good man,” she said. “He’s not the killer you’re looking for. His client is.”

  “His client?”

  She nodded.

  “The guy calls himself Shadow,” she said. “We don’t know his real name. After he does a kill, he calls Stuart up and tells him about it.”

  “Why?”

  “In the end if he gets caught, he’s going to have Stuart represent him,” she said. “That’s the official reason, anyway. Between you and me, I just think he needs to talk to someone about it. Stuart’s the perfect guy. He understands defects and doesn’t pass judgment. Plus he’s not at liberty to tell anyone about it, attorney-client confidentiality and all that.”

  “So he doesn’t know the guy’s name, huh?”

  “Negative.”

  Wilde slammed the whiskey down and ordered two more.

  His head spun.

  He didn’t care.

  In fact it felt good.

  He hadn’t been drunk for a long, long time.

  Maybe this was it.

  He was on that edge where he could go either way.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Something didn’t fit.

  At first he couldn’t figure it out but then he did.

  “What you said explains the files,” he said. “Wha
t it doesn’t explain is why his phone number was written down on a piece of paper in Jennifer Pazour’s house.”

  “She was a victim, right?”

  He nodded.

  “She was dumped on top of a shed way down south, out in the sticks.”

  “Poor girl.”

  Right.

  Poor girl.

  “So what do you think? Why was Stuart’s number in her house?”

  Jackie didn’t know.

  “The only thing I can figure is that someone must have referred Stuart to her for some reason,” she said. “She never became a client though. She never even called him as far as I know. Maybe the guy who killed her wrote it down, Mr. Shadow. Maybe he was playing some kind of twisted game.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he wanted the cops to find it and call the number. Maybe he wanted Stuart to get a call from the cops about a pinup murder and then not be able to talk to them about it. Maybe Shadow was testing Stuart somehow.”

  Wilde chewed on it.

  He didn’t swallow it though.

  It was too farfetched.

  Five minutes later Jackie got a strange expression on her face and said, “I just had a weird thought.”

  “How weird?”

  “Freaky weird.”

  “That’s my favorite kind.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” she said. “Anyway, Stuart has a client named Tessa Tanglewood. The last time she was in the office, me and her were talking while Stuart was finishing up with someone else. Anyway, Tessa told me that she had a girlfriend who was blackmailing someone and things were starting to get scary. Tessa told her to contact Stuart because she’d be able to talk in confidence and maybe he’d have some advice for her. Tessa was telling me this so that I’d relay it to Stuart when and if this other woman called. To my knowledge, no one ever called in with an issue like that. But what I’m wondering is whether this pinup victim—”

  “—Jennifer Pazour—”

  “—right, Jennifer Pazour, what I’m wondering is whether she was Tessa’s girlfriend, the one she was talking about. Maybe she had the number written down because Tessa gave it to her.”

  Wilde was impressed.

  It was a long shot but it was still a shot.

  “You’re a pretty amazing woman.”

  She leaned across the table and put her arms around his neck. She kissed him on the mouth then took his hand and put it on her breast.

  “Amazing enough to get friendly with?”

  122

  W ilde’s office was as good a place as any to be, so Shade and London hung out and waited for him to return. London turned on the radio to a jazz station. Tail hopped up and stuck his head right by the speaker, then rubbed his face on it. Ordinarily Shade would be impressed and make a comment.

  Right now she was too preoccupied.

  Words were stuck in her mind; namely the words spoken by Mojag, He said he bought it from someone, referring to Tehya’s scalp.

  She lit a cigarette, flicked the burning match out the window and immediately hoped no one was underneath catching it with the top of a head. She looked out just to be sure and saw it on the top of a man’s hat, still burning. The man wasn’t aware yet. She shouted out, “Hey, your hat’s on fire,” then ducked in before the guy could look up. Hopefully that did the trick.

  She blew smoke and said, “Mojag said that the guy who killed Visible Moon first tried to claim that he bought the scalp from someone.”

  London nodded.

  She remembered.

  “What if that was the truth?”

  “That was just a ploy,” London said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Think about it,” London said. “It doesn’t even make sense. What do you think, that someone commits a brutal murder to the point of even scalping someone and then risks his entire life to sell something that ties him to the crime? For what, five dollars?” She shook her head. “He didn’t buy it. Not in a million years. That was a lie. Don’t even give it two more seconds of thought.”

  Shade paced by the windows.

  London was right.

  Still, something nagged her.

  “Mojag shouldn’t have killed the guy,” Shade said. “Not without making him take her to Visible Moon’s body first.”

  London shrugged.

  “He snapped,” she said.

  “He shouldn’t have,” Shade said. “We don’t have any proof that she’s dead. What if she’s still alive chained somewhere like she was in the shed, rotting to death even as we speak?”

  London put her arm around Shade’s shoulder.

  “Look, I know this is hard,” she said. “The last thing the guy would have done is tell Mojag he killed Visible Moon if he didn’t. If she was alive, he would have played on it. He would have told Mojag she was alive and that he’d show him where she was. That would have given him a chance to escape. Or he would have tried to make a trade, his life for information as to where she was.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t have said he killed her unless he did.”

  Shade blew smoke.

  “I want to find her body,” she said. “I need to be sure.”

  “You want some advice?”

  “No.”

  “Good because here it is,” London said. “Just let it go.”

  “The guy scalped Tehya.”

  “So?”

  “So, don’t you think he’d do the same thing to Visible Moon at the end?”

  London shrugged.

  She didn’t know.

  “There was only one scalp on his wall,” Shade said. “Only one.” She exhaled. “We need to get to his house and pick up the trail.”

  123

  M ean charcoal-gray clouds rolled off the Rockies Saturday evening and threw a thick blanket over Denver. A breeze kicked up. Rain was coming. Blondie’s top was up. Wilde sat behind the wheel parked in front of Tessa Tanglewood’s house, waiting for her to show up from wherever she was.

  His head buzzed from the whiskey, but not much.

  The more he thought about Jackie Fontaine’s theory that Tanglewood was referring to Jennifer Pazour when she talked about a blackmail that was getting scary, the more it made sense.

  That would explain the mystery deposits into Pazour’s bank account.

  They were blackmail payments.

  If this was a dead end then he didn’t know where to turn next.

  He was running out of ideas.

  Alabama leaned over, pulled the pack of Camels out of Wilde’s coat pocket, lit one and handed it to him.

  “Here. Smoke. Calm down.”

  Right.

  Good idea.

  “I know you’re all sweet on that secretary Jackie Fontaine, since she gave you all that information and wanted to screw you,” Alabama said, “but I’m not so sure if she’s as naïve and innocent as you think.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What it means is, maybe the whole thing was staged. Maybe the whole story was a big charade, orchestrated by the lawyer and played out by her.”

  Wilde blew smoke.

  “Are you saying she’s covering up for Black?”

  “I’m saying I wouldn’t necessarily rule him out. The matchbooks have a B on them; his last name’s Black. Don’t forget that.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “That’s not all,” Alabama said. “According to your new love Jackie-girl, the files were just notes that Black took while talking to Shadow—right there, that’s a clue something’s wrong. It’s a stupid name. Shadow. Who calls a client Shadow? No one, that’s who.”

  Wilde smiled.

  “Right,” he said. “So?”

  “So, it’s one thing to take notes,” she said. “But there were pages torn out of the magazines in there to. So what happened? Are we supposed to believe that Black got the reports from his so-called Shadow client, and then independently went out and dug up the magazines—most of which were out of print by
that time and no doubt hard to find—just so he could rip the pages out and make the files a little more complete? That seems like a lot of work. It seems like a lot of time consumed by someone who really doesn’t have a lot of time to spare.”

  Wilde chewed on it.

  He gave it fair consideration.

  Still, it didn’t fit.

  “I don’t think Jackie was lying to me.”

  Alabama rolled her eyes.

  “Wilde, here’s a problem,” she said. “Women lie to you all the time and you never have a clue.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I do it myself.”

  “You do?”

  “All the time,” she said. “God, you’re so cute.”

  He wrinkled his forehead.

  “What do you lie to me about?”

  She was about to answer when a cab appeared from out of nowhere and pulled into the driveway. The back door opened and legs encased in a tight red skirt swung out, followed by a young woman about twenty-two. She was tall, five-ten or five-eleven, with the body of a tennis-player. She paid the driver and fumbled in her purse for her keys as she headed for the front door.

  Wilde and Alabama hopped out and followed.

  “Hey Tessa, wait up,” Wilde said. “We want to talk to you about Jennifer Pazour.”

  “You know Jennifer?”

  “Sort of. I hate to tell you this and don’t know how to do it except to just do it. She’s dead.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, they learned a few things.

  “Jennifer dropped a fare off one night way up on the north edge of the city and ended up getting flagged down by a man and a woman just as she was starting to head back,” Tessa said. “They were sort of out there in the middle of nowhere with nothing really important around. The guy had blood on his hands, not a lot and not obvious, more like he’d been pretty bloody at one point and then wiped it off but didn’t get it all. They were both pretty tipsy. Anyway, they had her drop them off at a bar on the west side, almost in the foothills, a place called Senior Frogs. She knew the bar. It wasn’t their kind of place. A younger crowd went there.”

  “Okay.”